Carl Faia born 1962 at Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma is an American composer and live electronics designer.
He studied composition at the University of California, Santa Barbara, Florida State University and the Royal Academy of Music in Denmark while on a Fulbright grant. Teachers included Edward Applebaum, Peter Racine Fricker, Per Norgard and Karl Aage Rasmussen. Later he participated in masterclasses with Tristan Murail, Philippe Manoury and Harrison Birtwistle.
Since 1995 he has been active as a live electronics designer working at IRCAM in Paris, at the CIRM in Nice where he has also been studio manager, and also as a freelancer. He has collaborated with numerous composers including James Dillon, Jonathan Harvey, Harrison Birtwistle, Fausto Romitelli, Luca Francesconi, Alejandro Viñao, Philippe Leroux, as well as, the National Jazz Orchestra of France. He has collaborated with artists to present new works with computer electronics in various festivals throughout Europe including Ars Musica (Brussels), Holland Festival (Amsterdam), Musica (Strasbourg), Agora (Paris), Gaida (Vilnius), MaerzMusik (Berlin), Lille 2004 as well as the Casa da Musica (Porto) et Lille 2004 and Queen Elizabeth Hall (London).
He works regularly with Studio Art Zoyd (France) and the Forum Neues Musiktheater der Staatsoper Stuttgart (Germany) as a live electronics designer with invited composers for music theatre, opera, concerts and multimedia projects.
In 2002 he founded the non-profit association, Lieu, based in Nice, France to promote the creation and diffusion of contemporary music using technology. Lieu has realized several projects in the development of new tools for sound creation and has been present in the production of new works using technology.
He participated at the Forum Neues Musiktheater in 2004 for Voyeur by Jörg Mainka and Last Desire by Lucia Ronchetti, in 2005, Die Süße unserer traurigen Kindheit by Hans Tutschku and in 2006 fremd by Hans Thomalla. Being an expert he also took part as a tutor on the Max/MSP workshop in 2006 at the FNM. Certain Chemin one of Faia`s own pieces has been performed at the Final Concert of the FNM.